A Voice for Men writer: “Marriage is a licence for sex,” and laws against marital rape will destroy marriage itself

A Voice for Men seems to joining the ranks of the marital rape deniers. In a post on the site today (archived here), AVFM contributor Amartya Talukdar attacks proposed laws to criminalize marital rape in India as part of an evil feminist plot to “criminalize marriage” itself. Because, in his mind, there is no such thing as marital rape.

In the post, he offers a muddled assortment of “arguments” against the very idea of marital rape. Echoing the, er, logic of sci-fi author and far-right crank Vox Day, Talukdar explains that once a woman marries a man she gives up her right to say “no” to sex with her husband.

The concept of marital rape is an oxymoron. Marriage is a licence for sex. A woman who does not want to have sex with her husband should separate from him and file for divorce.

Indeed, as he sees it, saying “no” to a spouse’s demands for sex is the real crime.

[M]arriage is where both partners should seek sexual fulfillment. Denying each other sex is a crime except in exceptional circumstances. This applies to both man and woman. In respecting mutual duties and responsibilities lies the successful marital relationship.

As long as a husband isn’t literally beating his wife, Talukdar suggests, she should simply submit to his demands — and shouldn’t even think about calling the cops on him.

Marriage is a partnership of trust. If a man should not subject his wife to physical pain, the wife should not subject him to the rigors of the criminal justice system.

Denying a husband sex is an evil act, because it might force the poor fellow to resort to masturbation — or worse!

What should a man do if he is regularly denied sex by his wife? Should he masturbate, visit brothels or should be commit adultery?

I’m going to take door number one here, and say, yes, it would be better for a man to masturbate than for him to RAPE HIS WIFE. (Having an affair or going to a brothel are also much better options than RAPING SOMEONE.)

But as Talukdar sees it, married men are essentially paying for a lifetime of sex-on-demand, and it’s a woman’s duty to live up to her side of this supposed bargain.

Rights come with duties. A woman in India has a right to maintenance even when husband is sick, and incapable of earning or is unemployed. He is duty bound to pay his wife alimony even after divorce. The Indian Courts have held that a man must “beg, borrow or steal” but he must maintain his wife. Then why shouldn’t a man have right to have coitus with his wife if he is duty bound to maintain her?

By this logic, divorced men paying alimony to their ex-wives should also have the right to demand sex from them, but never mind.

Since marital rape, in his mind, doesn’t exist, Talukdar resorts to conspiracy theory to explain why anyone would want to pass laws criminalizing marital rape in India. In his mind, it’s part of a longstanding plot by feminists to “criminalize” marriage and thus destroy it once and for all.

In India marriage is a sacrament. However, feminists have always viewed marriage as an institution that enslaves women. Hence they want this institution to be destroyed. …

Laws like no fault divorce, domestic violence, marital rape, alimony and child support have already made marriage an extinct institution in many countries. Hence caution must be exercised before Indian Law makers copy such laws.

In the world you and I live in, marriage is “extinct” in precisely zero countries. Talukdar, like most AVFMers, seems to live in a world of his own imagining.

Talukdar’s post is another new low in a long history of new lows from AVFM.

I don’t comment often but I feel a need to reply to rugbyyogi’s post because, well, I’m on the opposite side of that sort of situation. My wife and I haven’t had sex since we got married in January. This has been partially due to health issues (we’ve both been sick a lot this winter/spring), but it’s mostly been due to my own lack of sexual desire. And while yes, she would love to have sex more, we’ve talked a lot over the years about my lower desire especially recently as it’s dropped off almost completely – we think due to stress and my BC. They haven’t been easy conversations, and I usually end up crying during them, but for both of us, being honest with each other is the most important factor in our relationship. Sure, talking is hard, and it doesn’t necessarily solve things, but I’m not sure any of the alternatives are any better. We’ve had points in our relationship (only been married since Jan, but we’ve been together for fourteen years), where our mis-matched sexual drives have almost split us up, but we’ve talked things through and stayed together. That doesn’t work for everyone, I know, and I certainly think mis-matched drive is a perfectly legit reason to breakup/divorce. But I personally think that having that sort of conversation, even if it does lead to separation is far better than one partner cheating on the other.

My other problem is that, well, yes. Getting rejected for sex hurts. Getting rejected for anything hurts. But personally, when I turn down sex, or when we haven’t had sex in a while and I know my wife wants to, I get really crippling guilt. Because I love her, and I want her to be happy, and I know sex will make her happy, and I blame myself that I can’t give that at that moment. Sometimes that guilt spirals into depression which then makes me want to have sex even less, which leads to more guilt and… well, you can see where this is going. Rejecting a partner is, at least in my experience, just as bad emotionally as being rejected. Maybe it’s not the same for everyone, but that’s my experience.

Sometimes, we’ve had sex when I’m not super into it, but I figure, hey, why not, it’ll make my wife happy. And that’s perfectly legit. But that’s always been my decision to make. My body after all, and marriage or no marriage or whatever, the only person who gets to decide what to do with my body is me.

‘And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with calling off the relationship, breaking up, and getting a divorce. Which is your remedy when you and your partner are sexually incompatible and it is irreconcilable. Your remedy is NOT to rape your spouse, and it is NOT to come onto the internet and lecture to rape victims that their rapes didn’t count.’

Is THAT what you took from rugbyogi’s comment???

At no point did she excuse marital rape, and at no point did she lecture anyone about what does and does not count as rape. My interpretation was that she was pointing out that living in a relationship with mismatched sex drives is tough, and a lot of people seem to be rather dismissive of that. Pointing that out isn’t advocating sexual violence.

@boogerghost
That’s a good analogy. Just because you married someone who wants to shit on your feet (IDK) doesn’t mean you consented to that. So why can’t MRAs understand that just because you married someone who wants to put their penis in your vagina, you don’t have to let them. They would be quick to understand if it was some other thing they didn’t want to do, like the washing up. In MRAland, if I ever have a dirty dish I could just lob it at my husband and tell him to clean it. Now. Not later, not when he feels like it, NOW. And I could do this all day, every day, and I could use giant oversize fish kettles for cereal or wine glasses to eat my biscuits out of, because that’s what I feel like doing today.

Also, @rugbyyogi
I see that you are on your hobby horse. Let me mount mine, and we will ride together awhile.
There’s nothing “healthy”, “respectful” or “cooperative” about cheating on someone (“cheating” was your word, and as commonly understood, it means a violation of your agreed relationship terms). Do your relationships however you want, but it’s painfully ironic that you say didn’t have a healthy and respectful relationship, ergo you cheated.

Setting aside the “terrible person” part of this, I can’t help but think it reflects a staggering lack of understanding of basic gynecology.

If, for example, a woman has a uterine infection, her sexual interest the man in question can have absolutely nothing to do with not wanting sex. No one knows better than her whether sex is a good idea at any given point.

And, yeah, if you’re not getting sex and feeling abandoned, then YOU divorce THEM, idiot. People shouldn’t have to file paperwork not to be raped.

Long-time lurker here, just popping up to say that interestingly, in medieval Christian England (probably other countries too, but I couldn’t say for sure), both parties were in fact required to provide “sex on demand”, and this was known as the marriage debt. This often ended up being something that women could use to obtain an annulment, by claiming that their husband was impotent.

This would then be tested by the church court recruiting local prostitutes to stimulate the man in question, then report back. If he couldn’t get it up, the wife could have her annulment. On the basis of this, I don’t think the MRAs really want to go down this route as much as they think they do.

@PolicyofMadness How dare you call me a rape apologist? This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes it hard for both men and women to express dissatisfaction with the level of sex in a long term relationship. I have every right to express my dissatisfaction. I have every right to say I want more sex. And while it isn’t very nice, not having MY needs met in a relationship doesn’t make me want to bend over backwards to meet HIS needs. Is that coercion? I don’t know, perhaps in his mind it sometimes has been. Does that make me a rapist? I don’t think so. That’s why I say there are some grey areas. I’m not making anyone have sex with me. But I’m also under no obligation to be happy about not getting it.

Did you want me to say nothing and roll straight to divorce? Saying that constant rejection from the one person I’m “allowed” to have sex with is something I just have to suck up or leave or else I’m excusing rape is an extreme position. I’d say it’s not me who’s undermining the position of people who are experiencing marital rape in this case. Why don’t you just say to the victim of marital rape “Why don’t you just leave?*” I’d wager you’d never say that and the reason you don’t say it is because you know that there are people who are in circumstances where they find it incredibly difficult to leave. As is the case for me.

And what about people who say they want to leave because of lack of sex and then their partner makes a choice….under the threat of dissolution of life as the know it… to have sex. Is that rape? Or is it reasonable for me to state the reasons for my unhappiness and allow my partner to make it right if they can? You would put people like me in an impossible bind.

By the way, I’m the woman in a sexless marriage. After years of begging and internalising the rejection, I cheated. No regrets except I should have done it sooner. Part of my personal feminist awakening is embracing my own sexuality – I like sex, with a man, and I expect it on reasonably regular basis as part of a healthy, respectful, cooperative marriage. I do not think there is anything wrong with a man saying the same.

Alright, just in case of lurking MRAs: No, feminism does not condone cheating. Cheating is fucking disgusting, one of the worst breaches of trust possible. If a couple is sexually incompatible for whatever reason, the correct answers are marriage therapy or separating (or, if they’re both alright with it, trying polyamory, but that’s obviously rare). Not cheating. NEVER cheating.

@isidore13 and all the others… of course this isn’t an ideal solution. Of course, this isn’t the way I’d chose to live in better circumstances. I’m not a natural cheater. I hate lying and do as little as possible. But I hated feeling ugly and undesirable with my self-esteem in tatters even more. Do you think it’s easy to say these things knowing that I’ll receive moral castigation? I say this to show how desperate these situations become. Few people go into marriage either imagining that they’ll have very little sex (and I mean very, very little) or that that they’ll end up unfaithful.

If you reject a partner for years and years and make splitting up as difficult and painful as it possibly can be by using threats and financial and emotional coercion including custody threats, don’t expect them to remain chaste. Most won’t.

I don’t suppose I should expect people to understand this. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt when I’m personally attacked.

I actually do understand about cheating, it was just a surprise 🙂 it sounds like you are in a very hurtful situation and trying to figure out your way through it. I hope you can do that with as little pain as possible on all sides.

@dhag85 – yeah, I see what you’re saying. I meant ‘should’ as in you really shouldn’t want to say no more than you’re saying yes, not as in you should say yes while holding your nose and suppressing your gag reflex to have sex with a partner you find repugnant or even temporarily repugnant such as stinking drunk. Nor do I think you should say yes while having a bad UTI (ouch!) or ill with the flu or whatever, but that’s a temporary situation.

I empathize with the plight of the sex-deprived spouse. After 20-some years of marriage, my husband and I (though primarily I) endured a complete sexual drought lasting about three years due to his emotional problems.

Unlike palmedfire, however, he did not feel guilty about it nor sought ways to address it in any way; in his mind, this withdrawal was the right thing. It felt like death, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically; although I did not consider divorce.

Things improved slowly, and now, well into our 3rd decade together, we are again sexually active, probably wiser and stronger because of the darkness we weathered as a couple (or so I’d like to believe).

”Laws like no fault divorce, domestic violence, marital rape, alimony and child support have already made marriage an extinct institution in many countries.”

A voice for men……what kind of men? I mean…this is what men want, a sexual slave for a wife rather than a partner you respect & love as a human being?

Child support…so…when a woman divorces you and she gets custody (cause you’re probably an abuser) , you shouldn’t continue to financially support your own child? Why, are you divorcing your child, too?

Alimony…well, here I agree, women can take jobs, husbands or ex-husbands shouldn’t be obliged to pay alimony. But then, yet again, if they want somebody to take care of their own children, they should pay for a nanny. Or better yet, if they want children they should pay (big time!) for a surrogate mother, cause we don’t want women to lose their careers over motherhood.

Domestic violence…oh, so a wife, from AVFM’s perspective, should be legally allowed to beat on her husband, poison his coffee or even murder him in his sleep? Good to know. Men are such masochists.

Marital rape…so I can ”rape” my husband in his ass with a hot iron (whaaaat? That’s the only thing that makes me cum and, from what I heard from AVFM, marriage is all about sexual fulfillment).

This is as stupid asa stupid can get.

I knew AVFM were just a bunch of sexually frustrated rapists who are turned on by female suffering. But I didn’t know they were so open about it.

@maistreacht but I do think it’s more than that. If you feel you can’t have normal sexual relations with your spouse, it’s on you to sort it out, whether that being a difficult conversation or seeking medical or psychological help or you need to make it easy for them to go. You can’t expect to have your cake, not want it, leave it and leave it and leave it, and expect no one else will take a nibble.

I don’t think you should ever try to pressure someone into having sex. I do think that cheating is not always the worst option. Relationships aren’t 100% about sex. Sometimes there are other, more important reasons to stay together. I’m not saying betrayal is ever a good thing, but it genuinely think it can sometimes be less bad than divorce, depending on the situation. I also don’t think cheating should be lumped in with rape… sorry if I’m strawmanning someone by saying that. I acknowledge my reading comprehension isn’t perfect.

Cheating is hardly the worst thing a person can do. It certainly isn’t a mature, long-term solution to a dysfunctional relationship. I also know, in reality, getting out of a dysfunctional relationship can be complicated and good things can happen at bad times like finding someone who wants to fuck you and you want to fuck while you’re in a committed relationship with someone else.

I don’t expect someone in a dissatisfying relationship with me to remain chaste but I do expect them to have the decency to end the relationship with me prior to engaging in another. I’m fully aware that’s not always how things unfold though.

I have enormous regrets about cheating on my ex, not because he was a great partner for me, but because I compounded the hurt of ending our relationship with having violated the trust between us.

I don’t think you should ever try to pressure someone into having sex.

I agree. But how does a person voice their dissatisfaction with the current status of the sexual relationship such that it can’t be misinterpreted as pressure? And is it okay to expect that people who are in a loving, committed relationship will once in a while do things for each other even if they aren’t feeling particularly enthusiastic about it at the time? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I know what it’s like avoiding them.

When you say that coercing someone into sex is a “gray” area, I’m going to dare to call you a rape apologist. There is no “gray” area when it comes to consent, and it can still be rape if there was no physical force.

How dare you call that something other than rape apologia?

This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes it hard for both men and women to express dissatisfaction with the level of sex in a long term relationship.

Funny. My issue is with you trying to redefine rape, not with you being dissatisfied with your current sex life. It’s super-weird how you conflate those things. Why did you feel it was necessary to insert “gray rape” into your discussion about your personal sex life?

I have every right to express my dissatisfaction. I have every right to say I want more sex.

Did I say you didn’t? You can do that without trying to redefine rape. Why don’t you try that again without the rape apologia?

Did you want me to say nothing and roll straight to divorce?

I don’t want anything from you except that you not try to redefine rape. Rape is sex in the absence of consent, something that I frankly thought was beyond question around here but I guess I was wrong. Your problems with your sex life don’t actually require you to go around claiming that sex under coercion is not actually rape (or at least not rape-rape) and it is possible for you to have a discussion about that without throwing victims of non-forcible rape under the bus. So why are you doing that? It’s unnecessary, and yet you seem to think you have a right to do it. That’s bizarre and impossible for me to understand.

Count me among the people who don’t think cheating is a big sin, just a sign of deeper inability to communicate and be honest with each other. You won’t get all your needs fulfilled just spending time with your spouse. Sex is one that traditionally is fulfilled solely by a spouse, but non-traditional arrangements are still healthy as long as both partners understand the situation and accept it.

Rugby, you don’t have a respectful, cooperative and healthy marriage. You said you can’t talk it out with him because he wouldn’t accept your needs. That means he would leave you if he knew the truth, or force you to change in a way you can’t do if you want to be happy, You might be content with your compromise solution of keeping your cheating from him, but the only reason he accepts the status quo of your marriage is because he doesn’t know what it really is.

You’re happier than before because you lie to him. He is happy because he trusts you when he shouldn’t. You lie to him. The false trust will come crashing down the moment you or someone else shows him reality.

If you want to spend the next however many decades hoping that doesn’t happen, and hoping he isn’t extremely bitter if he ever finally does find out, go ahead and take that risk. Or you could tell him what your needs are for the future without admitting you have cheated already, and let him walk away if that is what he chooses.

Cheating is a disrespectful and hurtful thing to do to one’s partner, and is a betrayal of trust.

It is not even on the same level of awful as raping one’s partner, however. I’m not sure if there’s many worse things one can do to someone else.

Also, am I the only one who finds it weird that Talukdar seems to differentiate between committing adultery and visiting a brothel? As far as I know cheating is still cheating, whether you pay for the sex or not.

I seem to recall having read that in India it has traditionally been considered acceptable for married men to patronize brothels, and it is thus a serious concern for married women that their husbands will infect them with STIs acquired at the brothels.

Sorry David Futrelle for not getting back to you sooner! Been working like a mofo. But, no. Totally not necessary for you to give me credit for the discovery. Happy to help and expose this garbage. But I’d probably have sqealed like a little girl if you had lol!

But how does a person voice their dissatisfaction with the current status of the sexual relationship such that it can’t be misinterpreted as pressure?

Exactly. And there’s also, for most people, some pressure to sometimes have sex simply through the fact that you’re in a romantic relationship. This isn’t a case of one person pressuring another, but I’m just trying to say that in reality people do always feel some level of pressure to behave in certain ways.

Obviously you need to be able to express dissatisfaction with aspects of your relationship, or you’ll have no hope of keeping the relationship alive and well. But once the topic has been raised you can either find an acceptable solution, or not. When you can’t solve the problem in a mutually acceptable way, that’s when we’re gonna start disagreeing on the ethics. I’m of the opinion that in certain situations cheating might be the least (or one of the least) bad option. Others apparently think cheating should never be on the table, treating it as if it’s in a category of unforgivable sins. I think it’s ok to just disagree on that point, because it doesn’t seem to me like something we could hope to solve through arguments.

And is it okay to expect that people who are in a loving, committed relationship will once in a while do things for each other even if they aren’t feeling particularly enthusiastic about it at the time?

I think in a healthy relationship it’s possible to agree to sex even when you don’t really want it, because you know your partner wants it – and that doesn’t have to happen through coercion or pressure. Obviously sex is different in many ways, but in my case the occassions where I agreed to sex even though I wasn’t really in the mood weren’t more dramatic than making dinner for my wife even though I wasn’t personally hungry. (BUT, I also recognize I might not feel the same way if I had a history of sexual coercion, or the power dynamics were different in our marriage, or probably a trillion other reasons that I can’t think of right now.)

If a wife wants to peg her husband, does he have the right to say “No”? I’d like to hear the manosphere’s opinion of marital rape in that case. What if she’s into face sitting? What if she wants rimming on demand? What if she’s *gasp* fat and hairy? I thought men would rather die than fuck a woman over 150lbs?

Jackie, they’re just saying that not only should she be raped, she should have to enjoy it. If a woman does not like being forced to supply him with a warm body to fuck, she’s broken. That’s not his fault. He’s giving her everything she deserves and she should appreciate it. He’ll tell her when she should feel fulfilled.

He is writing at AVFM, so I’m guessing he is drawing the distinction because to him visiting a brothel is just paying for a wet and better substitute to your hand, rather than adultery where you might actually have feelings for the woman you cheat with. Sort of “Honey, it’s not really cheating, there is no way she would even fuck me if I hadn’t paid her. Really, you don’t have any reason to feel jealous.”

To most people, it is the sex behind your spouse’s back that is the problem, so there wouldn’t be any distinction. I personally see things a little differently from the norm, it isn’t the sex itself that bothers me at all, but the lying and subterfuge that go with it. I don’t see any distinction between a brothel and an affair either, they’re both cheating.

I can see how even some non-misogynists might make a distinction between intentional, one-time, paid-for sex and an actual affair, though. It’s up to each individual to determine what part of it really bothers them the most.

It occurs to me that some married gay men have a different perspective on what is and is not cheating. If my husband has sex with someone other than me, I do not experience it as a betrayal. From what I’ve been reading here, it seems to work differently for some opposite-sex couples.

Regarding the abominable Talukdar, he seems to have a problem with the idea of a married man masturbating. I don’t know a lot about how straight dudes do sex, but is there an idea that masturbating is somehow inappropriate for adult men? Because that would explain some things. For an otherwise healthy man in his twenties to believe that the only correct way to achieve orgasm is PiV intercourse puts a tremendous burden on him and any woman he is attracted to.

What does and does not constitute cheating does depend in the couple. There are folks in open relationships who are fine with one or both partner having sex with other people. If someone has their partner’s approval to sleep around, it’s not cheating. Cheating happens when one partner goes behind the other’s back without a prior agreement having been reached, and an implicit expectation of monogamy has been established. At least in my opinion.

Agreed. Cheating is all based on what terms of the relationship are built on, which happens to be one reason why communication is so important in a relationship. While I wouldn’t mind having an open relationship or if any partner of mine has a little something-something here and there, I’d rather have these terms talked about before hand rather than assumed.

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